Bucc bomb Bay

For those of you who remember this is the inside if an early version bomb bay; the later ones all have wiring and modifications for the bomb bay tank.
We used to get in it, and rotate it shut to check the fuel no air valves were working. Not really PC these days and extremely dangerous if the door was not controlled  from outside by friendly riggers.

St Athan part 3

Once the aircraft had cleared the pan we used to wait at the office there for the aircraft to take off which made for a nice 20 min interlude before we went back to the hangar.
This was the view from the office on take off.

St Athan 1986 part 2

Before any activity took place on the pan, we did have to tow it out. Being St Athan we did try to follow the rules. everywhere else it was a tractor driver, and two guys sitting on the back and a guy on the brakes in the cockpit. At Sthan we had about 8!

St Athan 1986

Bucc doing a flyby over StAthan pan n 1986, post flight test, a successful one i might add

For anyone who was at St Athan from 1980 through to 1987 they will remember how 3 Sqn carried out Major serving on Buccs, but in late 1983 2 Sqn, which had previously carried Victor majors, took over the major servicing line for Buccs.

I returned from Laarbruch in oct 1983 and started working on 2 Sqn so became the electrical lead for Bucc majors from then through to 1987 when the servicing line was moved to Abingdon. We ran three lines of Aircraft majors, and continued like that until they decided to add Sea Eagle missile systems to the Bucc, when they did that we started to incorporate Sea eagle mods until about 32 aircraft had them. the buss was so versatile in this respect as all we did was add some cable looms ,some pylon fittings, and a Sea eagle role panel in the cockpit and it was done.

The pan was a frequent port of call as we used it for all majors, we had victors as well which meant there was always and aircraft ready for flight test, we extended also when Tornados arrived in two hangars.

Expensive mistake

We had a guy working with us who fell into the usual penalty of damaging something for which the penalty was to pay to have it replaced, normally it would have been something minor, but this guy was driving down the perry track, with and ECM pod on a trailer.
He had forgotten to pin it in. he went round a corner and it came flying off, needless to say they are very expensive.
I guess he didn't ever pay for it but the threat seemed real at the tmie

Anyone been to Bruntingthorpe? looks interesting from where i'm sitting. This one is in rather good condition, no hydraulic oil streaming out of the back and no black toning from the intakes rearward. must be quite a job cleaning it after a day out.

Heard the other day they are recovering all the gate guardians as they have value now in restoration, there is only one serviceable Bucc at Bruntingthorpe but maybe there could be two or three if they collect all the bits